Multimedia conferencing is becoming more and more popular in day to day operation of corporations. An organization can have a plurality of conferencing terminals and/or virtual meeting rooms. The conferencing terminals may be of different types or models or from different vendors and may have its own type of control panel. The diversity of different types of equipment, each using different types of control panels can make learning and using video conferencing equipment challenging.
A multimedia terminal or a meeting room typically has a unique address (dial in number), which is different than the direct phone number of an employee of an organization, thus creating another obstacle for establishing a multimedia session. Additional information regarding virtual meeting rooms can be found in co-owned U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/960,337, the entire contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.
Furthermore, there are occasions when a user would like to change the type (media) of a current communication session while keeping the continuity of the session. For example, an employee may want to move from one room to another, or to convert an audio point-to-point (P2P) call presently proceeding via his phone extension into a conference session executed in a meeting room or vice-versa. Depending on the dynamics of the communication session a user will appreciate the freedom to change media, connection type, endpoint, etc. Presently, such a change is complicated and requires terminating the existing session and setting up a new session on another terminal (endpoint), which may have an unfamiliar control panel and also requires initiating a new dialing process with a new dial in number, etc.
Therefore it would be advantageous to have a single address (dial-in number) per a member or employee of an organization. For example, a phone number of the employee's personal extension phone can be used as a single dial-in number that can be used for different types (media) of communication sessions. An exemplary personal phone can be a wireless extension IP phone, a cellular phone, etc. It would also be advantageous if the personal phone were adapted to identify the existences and the availability of conferencing resources or facilitate transferring the call from the user's personal phone to a conferencing terminal (endpoint).
In addition, there is a need for a universal control panel for controlling a plurality of types of multimedia terminals. There is also a need to facilitate changing the mode of a communication session, for example, changing from a P2P communication session to a conference, changing from an audio conference to video conference, etc. Such improvements can increase the willingness of users to use and enjoy the benefits of multimedia sessions. It can be appreciated that such improvements would contribute to the experience and productivity of the employees of an organization.